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SUMMARY
Estimating strong-motion characteristics for seismic risk assessment and earthquake-resistant
design requires the clear definition of parameters that reflect the destructive potential of the
motion. There is currently considerable ambiguity in the definition of many parameters, in
particular duration, and unqualified statements are frequently repeated regarding the usefulness of
certain parameters. Current approaches to predicting the values of these parameters do not
facilitate the rational estimates of the most severe earthquake motions.
INTRODUCTION
The principal objective of engineering seismology is to provide quantitative estimates of expected levels of
seismic ground-motion as the basic input to earthquake-resistant design, the evaluation of collateral seismic
hazards, such as liquefaction and landslides, and seismic risk assessment. This invariably entails characterising
the complex nature of strong-motion accelerograms through the use of simple parameters and the development
of predictive relationships for these parameters. Since the first strong-motion accelerograms were obtained in the
Long Beach earthquake of 1933, a large number of parameters have been defined to characterise salient features
of the ground motion. In recent years, increasing numbers of parameters have been proposed for this purpose,
many of them of increasing complexity. However, careful study of the technical literature in this field reveals
that there is often considerable ambiguity or disagreement regarding the definition of even the simplest strongmotion parameters. This paper addresses this issue, discussing the definition of peak acceleration parameters and
duration and the consequences of the variations, often not specified that exist amongst the definitions employed.
The usefulness of strong-motion parameters is dependent primarily upon their intended use. The parameters that
can be employed in earthquake-resistant design are few and are directly related to the methods of structural
analysis used in current practice. For the purposes of seismic risk assessment, through empirical loss functions
relating structural damage levels to a given measure of ground-motion intensity, in theory any parameter can be
employed. The usefulness of the parameter in this case will depend purely on the degree to which it is a measure
of the destructive potential of the motion. It is shown that very few parameters, if any, can effectively
characterise the nature of strong motion in isolation and many, by themselves, convey nothing about the
destructive potential of the shaking. It is also shown that although there is often poor correlation between simple
strong-motion parameters and damage levels, it is often possible to identify lower bound values for damage to
occur.
Once a strong-motion parameter has been selected to characterise the ground motion, it is necessary to develop
relationships between values of this parameter and features of the earthquake source, the travel path to the site
and nature of the site. The nature of such predictive relationships for duration depends very heavily on the
definition of duration employed. Even for a new and robust definition of duration, it is found that reliable
prediction is difficult because of the dependence on features of the seismic source that cannot be predicted for
future earthquakes. The way in which strong-motion parameters related to amplitude are predicted is also
examined and important questions are raised regarding current approaches, particularly with respect to measures
of mean values and associated scatter. The possibility of employing estimates of upper bounds on the values of
some parameters is discussed.
1
2
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energy in a much shorter interval of time resulted in considerably greater damage in the 1986 earthquake
(Bommer et al., 1997).
Bolt (1973)
Housner (1975)
Trifunac & Brady (1975)
z
OBrien et al. (1978)
z
Hisada & Ando (1976)
z
Apitkaev (1977)
Trifunac & Westermo (1977)
Saragoni (1977)
z
z
McGuire & Barnhard (1979)
McCann & Shah (1979)
Perez (1980)
Takizawa & Jennings (1980)
Vanmarcke & Lai (1980)
Zahrah & Hall (1984)
Zhou & Xie (1984)
Shahabi & Mostaghel (1984)
Theofanopoulos & Drakapoulos (1986)
Elghadamsi et al. (1988)
Xie & Zhang (1988)
Mohraz & Peng (1989)
Theofanopulos & Watabe (1989)
z
z
Kawashima & Aizawa (1989)
Ellis et al. (1990)
z
Sarma & Casey (1990)
z
Papazachos et al. (1992)
Bommer & Martnez-Pereira (1996)
Somerville et al. (1997)
z
Wembo & Kezhong (1997)
Safak (1998)
Bommer & Martnez-Pereira (1999)
z frequency-independent duration
frequency-dependent duration
Significant
Rel
Abs
Structural
Rel
Abs
z
z
z
z
z
z
z
z
z
z
z
z
z
z
z
z
z
z
It is also often stated that PGA is a very poor indicator of the damage capacity, which is true, and that there is
very poor correlation between observed damage and recorded values of PGA. However, using a carefully
compiled dataset of 391 strong-motion recordings and 30 isoseismal maps, pairs of values of MMI and PGA
were extracted and plotted in Fig. 1 (Martnez-Pereira, 1999). Notwithstanding the shortcomings of using
intensity as a measure of damage, it can be clearly seen from the plot that for the motion to be potentially
damaging to engineered structures (MMI VIII) the value of PGA must be at least 0.2g. In this way, lower
bounds for potentially damaging parameters have been established for many parameters, including 20 cm/s for
peak ground velocity (PGV) and 0.8m/s for Arias intensity (AI).
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10
PGA (g)
0.1
0.01
4
10
11
12
MMI
Figure 1. Peak ground acceleration (PGA) versus Modified Mercalli intensity (MMI).
An equally important observation that can be made from Fig. 1 is that there are clearly many accelerograms with
PGA greater than 0.2g but which are clearly not damaging, being associated with intensity of shaking as low as
VI or even V on the Modified Mercalli scale. If other thresholds, based on other characteristics of the ground
motion, were also applied, for example that the PGV be greater than 20 cm/s and the damage index defined by
Fajfar et al. (1990) be greater than 30, then many of the weak motions with PGA greater than 0.2g would be
removed. The ability of any single parameter to measure the damage potential of the ground motion will depend
to a significant degree on which features of the motion (amplitude, frequency content, duration and energy) it
reflects; it is likely that any parameter which reflects any three of these properties will implicitly reflect the
fourth as well. However, no damage potential parameter is of any use unless it is emprically or analytically
correlated with indices or measure of damage, or at least a threshold value for damage is specified.
PREDICTABILITY OF STRONG-MOTION PARAMETERS
Seismic hazard assessment involves estimation of the ground motions to be produced by future earthquakes. This
is normally achieved through the use of attenuation relationships that predict values of a selected strong-motion
parameter as a function of earthquake parameters such as magnitude and distance from the seismic source to the
site. There are very fundamental difficulties encountered with current approaches to predicting strong-motion
parameters and these are discussed here with reference to the prediction of duration and of amplitude-based
parameters such as PGA and response spectral ordinates.
Prediction of Strong-Motion Duration
The nature of attenuation relationships for strong-motion duration is very much dependent on the definition of
duration employed. All the relationships based on durations defined by relative levels on the accelerogram or
Husid plot predict values of duration that increase indefinitely with distance, whereas those based on absolute
levels of acceleration predict durations that decrease with distance. The effective duration, DE, defined by the
authors of this paper (Bommer & Martnez-Pereira, 1999), is found to correlate well with the moment
magnitude, Mw. Using 32 accelerograms from rock sites located at distances of less than 10 km from the
earthquake source, in order to decouple the influence of distance and soil layers from the dependence on
magnitude, the following relationship was found:
(1)
The standard deviation of this regression is 0.28. Using the empirical relationship between rupture length and
moment magnitude of Wells & Coppersmith (1994) and assuming a constant fault rupture velocity of 2.5 km/s, a
relationship for the duration of fault rupture, DR, is obtained which is identical except that the constant becomes
3.62 instead of 3.70. However, the fit in Eq.(1) is only obtained by first applying correction factors for the
durations of those earthquakes caused by non-unilateral fault rupture; for earthquakes with bilateral rupture, such
as Loma Prieta (1989) and Kobe (1995), the duration of shaking would be expected to be half as long and hence
a factor of 2 was applied to the durations calculated for accelerograms from these earthquakes. This means that
although strong-motion duration can be estimated with some confidence for a given magnitude, there will always
be an uncertainty of a factor of 2 since it is not possible to know whether future earthquakes will be caused by
bilateral or unilateral rupture.
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log( Y ) = C1 + C 2 M + C 3 R + C 4 .log( R )
(2)
The problem arises in the way the regressions are performed using the logarithmic form of the equation as in
Eq.(2), which results in records of small amplitude having the same influence on the coefficients as the few
genuinely strong motions. As a result, the relationships are constrained primarily by weak records and yet the
most important application is in determining the strong earthquake motion that can be generated within a few
tens of kilometres of the source. The fact that these predictive equations have become known as attenuation
relations, with the emphasis therefore on the decay of amplitude with distance, suggests that the focus has not
been governed by engineering concerns. The recognition that strong-motion amplitudes close to the earthquake
source are not reliably predicted by standard attenuation relationships has led to derivation of correction factors
that take account of the effects of rupture directivity (Somerville et al., 1997). The application of these factors
certainly improves near-field estimates of ground-motion amplitudes, but the factors rely on the a priori
determination of source parameters which, like the non-unilateral rupture that alters duration, are difficult to
estimate for future events.
Another problem associated with the use of the logarithmic form of the attenuation model is the measure of the
scatter represented by the standard deviation &, which is measured on the logarithm of amplitude. A typical value
of & for PGA is 0.26; the mean-plus-one-standard deviation value for a small PGA of 0.05g is 0.09g, the scatter
not altering the fact that the motion is too weak to be of significance in the design of new structures. However,
the mean-plus-one-standard-deviation value of a near-field PGA of 0.50g is 0.91g, and the design implications of
the difference are vast. In probabilistic seismic hazard assessment, the scatter is truncated at some limit, but the
current options for selecting the truncation level have no physical basis. It is possible that this results in small
and distant earthquakes exerting undue influence on the hazard at a site and it definitely does not provide rational
estimates of near-field amplitudes. Since it is generally not possible to predict, for future earthquakes, the source
characteristics that give rise to the most extreme amplitudes, the assessment of extreme seismic loading may
benefit from assessment of upper bounds on amplitude parameters. It is very interesting to note that until the
early 1970s many studies were published (e.g. Brune, 1970; Ambraseys, 1974) proposing, on the basis of
physical models, limiting values on strong-motion parameters, several of which seem to have been confirmed by
subsequent recordings (Figure 2). It is equally interesting to note that in 1971 the San Fernando earthquake
produced three times as many accelerograms than had been accumulated in California over the previous 38
years: researchers could not resist the temptation of fitting curves through the clouds of data points that had
become available, despite the very small amplitudes of most of the records. From then on the focus switched
almost completely from the estimation of upper bounds to the estimation of mean values associated with huge
scatter, which has not been significantly decreased by the expansion of strong-motion recording. As the number
of accelerograms grows with expanding strong-motion networks, especially with automatic digitisation facilities
and digital accelerographs, although strong records are being obtained, the proportion of weak motions in the
databank is actually growing. The mean values of PGA predicted for a distance of 1 km from an M 7 earthquake
by Californian attenuation relationships published over the last 30 years have gradually decreased, whereas the
scatter has remained almost constant (Martnez-Pereira, 1999).
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The development of performance-based design, which aims to provide greater control over structural and nonstructural damage, presents new challenges for engineering seismology that may require new approaches. The
parameters that control damage must be identified and unambiguously defined. When estimating ground motions
for the most severe loading cases for which standard occupancy structures must be designed against collapse,
upper bounds may provide a more rational approach than extrapolation across large scatter. Whichever approach
is adopted, when the focus is on the most severe loading, there is strong argument for discarding a large
proportion of the strong-motion dataset, which is too weak to be relevant.
0 .5
0 .0
1 9 30
1 9 40
1 9 50
1 9 60
1 9 70
1 9 80
Petrolia
Nahanni
Gazli
Pacoima
Morgan
Hill
El Centro
1 .5
Long Beach
PGA (g)
Hokkaido
Honshu
Parkfield
Koyna
Ho rizo n t al
2 .0
1 .0
Imperial
Valley
Vert ical
Northridge
2 .5
1 9 90
Parkfield
80
60
40
El Centro
100
Long Beach
PGV (cm/sec)
120
Petrolia
Northridge
Pacoima
140
Mxico
Ye ar
20
0
1930
1940
1950
1960
1970
1980
1990
Ye ar
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